You Don't Understand at All
by darkstorm5000
Summary: When Emma finds herself trapped in the 1980's, how will she react to meeting her own mother as a teenager? Final Chapter Added.
1. Mothers and Daughters

Disclaimer: I don't own Degrassi or any of it's character's.

A/N: After watching Back to the Future one too many times, I decided to write this story purely for the fun of it. Hope you enjoy it!

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It was Friday night at the Simpson-Nelson residence, and the Nelson half of the family was having a test of wills that could be heard as far as two houses down.

"I don't get why you're being so unreasonable." Emma yelled as she walked down the steps to her room.

"I'm not being unreasonable, all I'm asking is for you to help out tomorrow." Christine Nelson, aka Spike, aka Mom replied as she followed her teenage daughter down to her basement bedroom.

"I do help out around here. All I'm wanting to do is go out tonight and have some fun, like every other person my age." Emma said.

"I'm not trying to spoil your fun, but tomorrow I have to take Snake to the doctor's early in the morning. He has to see the doctor for a follow up exam so they can determine how well the chemo is working. So I'm going to need you to get up early and watch Jack for me."

"And I told you, watching Jack was no problem. What I don't understand is why that should keep me from going out with Chris tonight?" Emma asked.

"I want you to be awake and alert in the morning when Archie and I leave. I won't have time to feed Jack and I'm going to need you to prepare his bottle." Spike answered.

"You make it sound like I've never watched Jack before. That's all I do lately. That's probably why guys don't stay interested in me for very long." Emma shouted back at her.

"You can't blame us for your break-up with Sean, he seems like he has issues of his own. From what I've seen of Chris he seems like a nice young man and I think he'll understand if you tell him why you can't go out tonight. When I get back from the hospital tomorrow, you'll have the rest of the weekend to yourself and you two can go out tomorrow night." Spike tried to point out.

"That's what I'm saying, I shouldn't have to plan my life around yours." Emma screamed in disagreement."

"Well, I didn't plan on Snake getting cancer and I didn't plan on having Jack, but that's the way life is. Life just happens sometimes." Spike told her.

"But you forgot one. You didn't plan on having a kid at fourteen with a guy who wasn't going to help you and you didn't plan on it ruining your life, did you Mom." Emma yelled, trying to hurt her Mother.

"Em, I know your upset, but that wasn't called for." Spike said with tears forming in her eyes, "I know what it's like to be your age and wanting to find your own way. But I also know, from first hand experience, that part of growing up means becoming responsible and making sacrifices sometimes."

"You know what it's like? Mom, you haven't been a teenager in like 20 years. You have no idea what it's like to be me." Emma said as she turned over on her bed, facing away from her mother.

"You know, when I was your age I said almost the exact same thing to my mother. I guess it's one of those things that never changes." Spike said, as she walked back upstairs to check on Jack.

Emma just lay there on her bed with her outfit, including her jacket, still on. "She doesn't understand anything about me…" Emma muttered as she drifted off to sleep.

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Emma had only intended to take a short nap, but when she felt herself being shaken back to consciousness, it felt like she had been asleep for a hundred years.

"Hey, are you okay? I think you better wake up." Emma heard a familiar voice say to her.

"Huh." Emma muttered back.

"I don't think you should be sleeping here." The voice said again. Emma recognized it as her Mom's but it sounded different for some reason.

"Mom, this is my bed. Where else am I supposed to sleep at?" Emma said with annoyance in her voice.

"Well, I don't know about where you come from, but around here it's way dangerous to sleep on a park bench at night." Emma's Mom said to her.

"A park bench, how did I get on a park bench?" Emma said as she sat up on the bench. She opened her eyes but her vision was blurry, so she struggled to get her eyes to focus.

"That's what I've been trying to figure out myself." Spike said.

Emma was awake enough to realize she was outdoors, but had no idea how she got there. As she was able to finally see her surroundings, she was shocked when she looked at her mother. Her mother had her hair done in tall blonde spikes like when she was a teenager. Spike looked like she had stepped out of one of the pictures Emma kept in her room.

"Mom, what are you doing dressed like that!" Emma exclaimed.

"Look, this is the way I always dress. And I dress like this because I like it, not so I can be made fun of by some stranger." Spike replied.

"A stranger! I'm you're daughter." Emma stated, as she looked closer at her Mom and realized something was very, very wrong.

"Are you on some kind of medication? I'm only fourteen and you look like you're older than I am." Spike replied.

"Mom, what kind of sick joke are you trying to play on me?" Emma said, feeling terrified that she couldn't make heads or tails of what was going on.

"Why do you keep calling me Mom? Although I guess I should get used to it, that's what every body's going to be calling me in about nine months anyways. My name is Christine, but you can call me Spike." Spike said as she put her gloved hand on Emma's shoulder, "It's getting cold now, you'd better get home before your parents call the police or something."

Emma was confused and cold. This had to be a dream, but everything felt too real to be a dream. Emma looked at her mother, who was now younger than her, and just started crying. She wished someone would just explain to her what in the world was going on.

"Hey, whatever it is it can't be that bad, can it?" Spike asked her.

But Emma didn't say anything back because she wasn't sure herself how bad things were going to get now. Spike just put her arm around Emma and told her that everything was going to be okay.

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Next chapter: Where is Emma, or more accurately, when?


	2. What Year is This?

"This is not happening, this is not happening…" Emma kept silently repeating to herself.

"Look, maybe I should take you to the police. It seems like something's really wrong with you." Spike said as she tried to get a response from the girl she found sleeping on the park bench.

"I don't need the police, I just need to know where I am!" Emma yelled.

"If you don't stop screaming like that, the police are going to be here whether you want them to be or not." Spike warned her, "What's the matter, are you some kind of run-away or something."

"No." Emma said with her head down and tears still rolling down her face, "More like everybody's run away from me."

"That's like totally harsh. You don't have anybody else you can stay with for now." Spike asked her.

Emma looked up at her teenage mother and wanted nothing more than to reach out and hug her. But the girl in front of her was her mother, but she wasn't. She saw a girl wearing a long gray coat, black jeans, and a pair of leather black boots that looked like a cross between punk and prep. Emma couldn't even call her Mom, let alone reach out for comfort from her.

"I'll call Manny and…" Emma stopped herself in mid sentence as something had just occurred to her.

"Spike," It felt weird to Emma to be calling her Mom by her nickname, "Can you answer one question for me?"

"I'll try. So let me have it." Spike replied.

"What year is this?"

"The year? You must really be out of it." Spike said to her, "Anyway, that's an easy one. It's Nineteen Eighty--"

Emma heard the answer and didn't want to believe it was true. How the hell did she end up almost twenty years in the past?

"I've got to go. I need to think." Emma said as she started to stand up to leave.

"You're not going anywhere, not like this." Spike told her.

"What do you care? It's like you said, you're not my mother." Emma replied.

"You're right, I'm not. But I do care." Spike informed her.

"Why should you care? How did you manage to find me anyways?" Emma asked her.

"I'm not a lost and found, you know. It's not like I go out at night and look for strangers to find sleeping on park benches." Spike answered.

"Then why are you here?"

"Actually I was coming from a friends house and I saw you from the sidewalk. I saw you sleeping on this bench and I didn't want something bad to happen to you." Spike revealed to her.

"How long have I been here?" Emma inquired.

"How would I know? I just saw you about ten minutes ago. You're lucky no one mugged you." Spike said.

"My purse!" Emma exclaimed as she realized she didn't have her purse or her wallet. Whatever brought her to this time and place didn't bother to give her any spending cash.

"I guess I was wrong." Spike replied.

"Things are just getting worse by the second." Emma said aloud.

Spike felt really bad for the girl she had found sleeping on the park bench. She had read stories about girls that run away from home for whatever reason and are forced to do horrible things just to survive. She didn't want this girl to go down that same path.

"Look, you don't want me to call the police, so I won't. But we can't sit out here all night. I bet you haven't eaten anything in like forever, so let me take you to a burger place a lot of us kids hang out at. I'll even pay for it."

"Fine." Emma said, not feeling like putting up a fight.

As the pair stood up, Spike made a comment about Emma's appearance.

"Wow, you're like really tall." Spike said to her.

"Um…I get it from my Dad's side of the family." Emma replied.

"You know flare pants are out of style, but I say if you're going to make a fashion statement, make a loud one." Spike told her.

Emma couldn't help but laugh inside. All of this time she had thought her Mom was the one that was fashion impaired, but in the here and now it was the exact opposite.

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Next chapter: This ain't your father's Degrassi, wait a minute, it is.


	3. You Don't Know How it Feels to be Me

As Emma Nelson walked alongside her teenage Mother, she was amazed at how everything around her looked familiar, yet it all seemed so different. She must've been up and down Busy St. a million times, and not once had she paid attention to the details of each building. But that wasn't the case tonight. Many of the older buildings she recognized, but in this present time, some of them looked as though they had just been built. Many of them had names on the front that were unfamiliar to her.

"Is it much farther?" Emma asked Spike.

"Not much, it's right there." Spike said as she pointed about four buildings ahead of them.

Emma kept expecting to wake up in her bed at any moment and for this crazy dream to just be over. But it just kept going and going, and Emma was starting to accept the possibility that this may not be a dream after all. You can imagine a lot of things in dreams, but the sheer amount of detail she was taking in; from the way things looked, to the sounds that she heard, to the distinct scents that she smelled were way too real, even for her sometimes overactive imagination. Finally, they arrived at the destination they had been walking towards. The small diner was a nice place, but it didn't have anything on the Dot Grill that had just opened up back home. Back home. Emma wondered if she would ever see that place again. When they entered the diner, Emma could see quite a few kids there that were her age.

"Actually they're Mom's age. But they're also my…whatever!?" Emma said silently to herself.

Emma could also hear music coming from a jukebox against a wall across from them. As she looked closer she noticed this jukebox wasn't playing CD's. Instead, it was playing little records, ones like her Mom would sometimes get out and play. Emma recognized that the song playing was something by that rap group, Run DMC. But she wasn't really sure which song it was.

"Come on, let's sit over here." Spike said as she motioned Emma to a booth towards the back.

As they sat down, Spike removed her coat and gloves to reveal a black Billy Idol T-shirt that she was wearing over a white turtleneck sweater. Emma knew how much of a Billy Idol fan her Mom was and wasn't surprised at her wardrobe choice. Emma also decided it was a little too warm inside to keep on her jacket, so she removed it to reveal her tight red blouse with spaghetti straps on the shoulders.

"Wow, your parents let you go out like that?" Spike asked her.

Emma couldn't help but think, "She's my age and still she criticizes everything I do."

Emma then responded in a sarcastic tone, "Yeah, they usually have no problem with it."

"It must be nice to have such cool parents." Spike replied as she got up to go place their order. Emma was so confused at the exchange, that she just didn't say anything back to her.

"So, what do you want to have?" Spike asked her.

"I'm not sure." Emma replied.

"How about some hot cocoa?"

"That sounds good." Emma answered in agreement.

"Two cocoas, coming up" Spike said as she turned and walked over to the counter.

While Spike was ordering, Emma just sat there looking at all of the other occupants. They all had hairstyles and outfits that made them look like they should have been at that Eighties dance that she and Manny had snuck into. But these weren't costumes. Apparently, they were the real thing. Emma also thought about how she and Manny hadn't been speaking to each other since the night of the rave. But now, she felt like she would give anything just to have her here with her.

Emma's train of thought was interrupted when Spike returned to the table.

"Our order'll be ready in a bit." Spike said as she sat down.

The two girls sat there in the booth, neither one saying anything. Emma decided to break the awkward silence.

"So, you like Billy Idol?" Emma said, referring to Spike's shirt.

"Yeah, I've been a fan since I was like seven or eight. He was the first album I ever bought." Spike replied with a huge smile, revealing to Emma that she wore braces too.

"I should know, as much as you made me listen to him." Emma thought to herself.

"Who's your favorite band?" Spike asked her.

Emma didn't know how to answer her question. She thought to herself "I kinda like this band called Coldplay. You haven't heard of them yet, but they'll be popular in about twenty years. Yeah, I can really tell her that."

"Well?" Spike asked her.

"Huh?" Emma replied as she remembered she was in the middle of a conversation.

"You still haven't answered my question. Who's your favorite?" Spike asked again.

"Oh, I don't have one favorite. I listen to all kinds of music." Emma answered.

"That's cool. You know what? I think the lead singer from INXS is kind of cute." Spike revealed to her.

"Yeah, I guess so." Emma replied, not really sure who INXS was.

After Emma answered, they sat there in another moment of awkward silence.

"So, what do you want to talk about now?" Spike asked her.

Emma immediately said the first thing that came into her mind.

"So, you said that you're pregnant?" Emma asked her.

"What?" Spike said with surprise.

"When you found me in the park, you said something about becoming a Mom."

"Oh. I guess I sorta did." Spike answered.

It was only recently that Emma and her Mom had started talking about her biological Dad, Shane. Following an incident with Shane, Spike had promised Emma she would be open and honest with her and tell her everything about their past. But Emma felt that her mother was still holding some things back from her. Now was her chance to find out everything.

"So what made you decide to go and get pregnant?" Emma asked her, intentionally making the question somewhat difficult.

"Are you crazy!? I didn't go out and get pregnant on purpose, it just sort of happened." Spike answered.

"Do you love him? I mean the guy that did this." Emma asked.

"I'm not sure. Part of the reason I decided to do it with him was because I wanted him to really like me. I thought I loved him and I thought he felt the same way about me. But ever since he found out, he's been totally treating me like I'm some sort of outcast." Spike revealed to her.

Emma was stunned by what she heard. Her mother had always made it a point to tell her to think for herself, to do what she felt was right for herself and not to do things just because others wanted her to. But now, she realized her mother had been speaking from first-hand experience.

"Why all of the interest in my problems anyways, I'm sure you've got enough of your own?" Spike asked Emma.

"Just curious, I guess. You just seem too young to be thinking about having a baby." Emma answered.

"I know, I've been seriously thinking about not having this baby." Spike told her.

When Emma heard those words, it confirmed everything that Emma had suspected about how her own mother had felt about her. That she was just a mistake, that her mother really didn't want her.

"So I guess you can't bother being burdened by some kid, huh?" Emma asked, with a tone of resentment.

"I'm not kidding myself, I know being a teenage mother isn't easy. But that's not the reason I'm thinking of not having it. I don't know if I could stand to have a baby and put it up for adoption, only to have it resent me because I abandoned it. Or worse yet, what if I raise it myself and my kid grows up hating me because I'm such an awful mother? I just don't know what I'm supposed to do?" Spike confessed to Emma.

"What makes you think you would be such an awful mother?" Emma asked her.

"Perfect example. I've been going to a support group for teenage mothers where they discuss all of the problems and hardships that they face. As an experiment, they gave each of us an egg to take care of like we would a real baby. So I take mine and I do my best to make sure I'm feeding it and taking care of it like I'm supposed to. Shane, that's the name of the guy that got me pregnant, says he wants to be a responsible Dad. So I give him the egg and tell him he has to take care of it, just like I did. So I got invited to a party and I went, since he's supposed to be home babysitting our pretend kid. But guess what? He shows up at the party and he and some of the guys start playing with the egg like it's a baseball or something. I was so ticked off that I just got up and left and he followed me outside. He comes to tell me that the egg is embarrassing. Well, how does he think I feel? When I'm the size of a house and people are whispering about the girl in junior high who was dumb enough to have sex, does he think I'm going to feel good about myself? Plus on top of that, the egg got broken while we were arguing. Some wonderful mom, huh?"

Emma could see the hurt in her mother's eyes as she poured out her heart to her. Emma had heard these stories from her Mom before. But when she had heard them, she thought they were just words of warning from an overprotective mother. Seeing her Mom now, looking so vulnerable and on the verge of tears, Emma knew that they had meant something more.

"I don't think you'll be that horrible of a mother." Emma stated to her.

"What makes you so sure?" Spike asked as she wiped a tear from her eye.

"Because you're a warm and caring person. I mean, you were concerned enough to bring a total stranger here from the park when you didn't have to. If you can be that kind to someone you don't even know, then I know you'll care ten times as much about your own kid."

"I guess you right." Spike said as a small smile came back to her face.

"I know I'm right." Emma asserted.

"You know it's been pretty cool of you to sit here and listen to all of my problems." Spike said, "Hey, I think our order should be ready, I'll be right back."

As Spike got up to go and get their order, Emma sat there thinking about how she never really bothered to think about what her Mom went through when she was her age. If she ever got another chance to, she would make sure her Mom knew how much that she loved her too. Just as that thought crossed her mind, Emma heard a commotion coming from the pick up counter.

"I told you the other night that I said everything that I had to say to you." Spike said loudly.

"You're not even giving me a chance to explain." Somebody said back to her.

Emma quickly realized that the somebody her Mom was having words with was in fact her father, Shane McKay. She just sat there and watched as the two teenagers had a very public argument.

"Explain what? The fact that you're like totally ashamed of your pregnant girlfriend!" Spike told him.

"I never said I was ashamed of you." Shane responded.

"You didn't have to. You can't even bring yourself to tell your parents because I'm such an embarrassment." Spike pointed out.

"That's not fair." Shane disagreed.

"You know what's not fair, having your personal business put on display in front of a bunch of strangers. Well, I'm not going to do that and I'm leaving!" Spike said as she paid for their order and walked back to the table she and Emma were sitting at.

"I need to go, I'm sorry to rush off…um, I didn't catch your name." Spike said as she put her coat and gloves back on.

"Emma. My name is Emma."

"Well, Emma, maybe I'll see you around and we can talk again soon." Spike said as she headed towards the door.

Emma watched as Spike, her Mom, walked out of the door with Shane following behind her. Emma decided to follow after them, and hopefully get them to at least stop yelling at each other.

"Hey you two, wait up." Emma said as she hurried towards the entrance.

Just as she went to open the door it suddenly swung back at her, hitting her in the face and knocking her unconscious. The next thing she remembered was the sound of Spike trying to wake her up.


	4. Where Am I?

"Emma, are you all right? You need to wake up."

Emma could feel Spike trying to wake her up, but the blow from the door must've did some major damage because it felt almost impossible.

"Come on Emma, you need to get up." Spike said.

"All right Spike, I'm getting up." Emma replied.

"You know, even though you're mad at me, you can still call me Mom." Spike said to her.

Emma finally regained consciousness and realized she was back in her own room, in her own bed. She opened her eyes and saw her adult Mom standing over her.

"Mom, your hair is so…short, and it's so brown." Emma said to her.

"Glad you finally noticed the hairstyle I've had for a few years now. I've got to hurry up, Snake is waiting for me in the car. Jack hasn't woken up yet, so you can just lay here for awhile but just keep an ear out for him." Spike said as she hurried back up the stairs from Emma's basement bedroom.

Emma could still hear the hurt in her mother's voice. Everything was coming back to Emma and she remembered what she had said to her the night before. Emma laid there on her bed thinking about how the dream she had just woken up from seemed so real. She also thought about everything in her dream and about how she felt towards her mother now. Before she could get too deep in thought, she heard the cries of her little brother coming from his crib in the living room.

"There, Jack, I bet you feel better now." Emma said as she changed his diaper. After she had changed and fed him, Emma put Jack back into his crib where he went back to sleep. Then she sat on the sofa and let her thoughts drift for a while.

When Spike and Snake returned, Spike helped her husband up to their bedroom so he could lie down and rest. She then came back down the stairs to check on Jack and to take over for Emma. Spike was surprised when her teenaged daughter greeted her, not with an unpleasant look or a smart-mouthed comment, but with something totally unexpected.

"What's wrong Em?" Spike asked her.

"Nothing. I just wanted a hug is all. A hug, and to say I'm sorry for what I said to you last night." Emma replied.

"Well, apology accepted, and as for the hug, you can get one of those whenever you want." Spike said as she embraced her daughter.


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